


Dream a little dream of me.

by Nameha



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, KakaYama Week 2019, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 19:48:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18817789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nameha/pseuds/Nameha
Summary: Soulmates dream of each other's memories; The past. One night Kakashi and Yamato put the pieces together.





	Dream a little dream of me.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah! I'm so excited to be participating this year! Day one of kakayama week: soulmate au

The fire burned low, crackling softly. Embers floated somberly into the chilled wind, catching brightly, only to blink out of existence. White smoke lazily mingled the slow burn of pine, cedar, with the fridge edge of the atmosphere.

Team 7 slept, curled up, in their respective sleeping bags away from the dying flame. Sakura and Sai nearly back to back while Naruto was positioned away from them. Whimpering fitfully in his sleep, hands twitching by his face as if to reach out to someone. A name lost somewhere behind his lips.

Naruto had always dreamed the most vividly, Kakashi mused as he looked upon his team eye turned up fondly. He knew what, who, Naruto was dreaming of: A boy with raven hair and lonely eyes.

From his position on a log, of a large tree, closest to the fire Kakashi looked up, the sky all hung with jewels. Diamonds of cosmic light glittered against the navy backdrop. Dawn seemed years away. The tree line gave the illusion of mountains in the distance. As if they were farther from home, somewhere, lost in a foreign land. Instead of nestled safely in the borders of fire country.

"Tenzo." He called softly.  
Knowing the other Jonin, who was bundled up next to him against a tree, wasn't asleep.

"What do you dream about?" His voice had a distinct wistfulness about it.

"If you...do."

Yamato cracked his eyes open, letting the fire dance across his vision. He slid his eyes to Kakashi. Bathed in the warm glow, his features seemed so soft in the low light. He seemed younger, closer, as if the years apart had meant nothing. A still frame from a memory of ANBU days gone by. 

He felt a flutter his chest.

His eyes drifted to Naruto, who was mumuring softly and clutching his pillow, close to his chest, protectively.  
His eyes settled back on Kakashi.

"..Ah..." Yamato inched up, straightening his back and letting the blanket pool beneath his chin. Breath coming out in pale puffs. 

"You're talking...about those dreams." His voice was hesitant, the cautious quality giving way to concern. He ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth and back of his teeth. A bundle of nerves gathering at the base of his gut.

Kakashi responded with a simple tilt of his head.

'If you still can.' 

but those words were left to hang heavy in space between them.

Yamato stared into the fire, as if it would conjure the answers that Kakashi wanted to hear.

"It's complicated, Kakashi..." Yamato's eyes flickered from the fire to Kakashi then back again.

"Nothing we can't figure out...Tenzo, it's okay to tell me." Kakashi's voice was soft still, tender almost.  
"you can always tell me...anything."

He sighed defeatedly. 

They had danced around the subject of dreams for years. Dreams of the past, dreams for the future, dreams that interlaced fate; It was no man's land, there was no time, for shinobi like them.

But here, in low light, in the space between the withering dawn, there was time, there was finally time.

"I used to dream, before ROOT." He started tentatively. His voice measured.

"It's hard to... remember from that time. Mostly just bright flashes that I didn't have the capacity to make out. but I clung to them, the dreams. When you're alone, all you think about is dying."

Kakashi's shoulders tensed slightly before relaxing again. He knew yamato's past was stained like his, even though they never spoke about it. He didn't know the extent of pain that he truly hid under those expressive eyes. This was an intimate act. Maybe an intimacy he couldn't bare the consequences of. But he wanted to try, he had to know.

"But when there's two of you, all you can think about is surviving. So I did, I survived because someone was... someone was out there for me." Tenzo stilled for a moment, gathering his thoughts before continuing.

"When I was in the foundation...Danzo had a way of...dealing with the dreams surfacing in his shinobi. A repression technique." The bitterness in Tenzo's voice was thick, as if the words left a foul taste in his mouth.

"ROOT operatives..." He repeated absentmindedly. "...have no past, no future, only the mission. Danzo thought dreams..."

He paused again , his voice dropping low to a whisper for next word.

"...Soulmates..."

Kakashi felt a shiver run through him, he could blame it on the wind chill.

"...were dangerous to this mindset. So he found a way to nearly eradicate the threat." Tenzo kept his eyes trained on the remnants of wayward flames.

"I used it every night, the technique, until...you."

He paused and corrected himself.

"well until, you got me transferred out. Then slowly I started to dream again, barely, they're few and far between. I don't dream every night; I think it's a lingering side effect. It's mostly just an endless black expanse, a nothingness like before." He admitted sheepishly.

"But... they're different now." He swallowed. Eyebrows knitting together, a pained expression gracing his features as he fought to school his expression, keeping it casual, open.

"T-they were always just fragments of memories. But now they're like splinters, slivers of fleeting disjointed moments. Sometimes I see the same thing twice but from different perspectives. A cave in, the ceiling coming down."

Kakashi stiffened, letting out a shuddering breath as his fingers created half moons in his gloved palms. He kept his left side to Yamato.

"But I can't see anything through the dust..the dirt, the tears and suddenly everything has a red tinge. I think...." He trailed off.

Kakashi's finger twitched, as if to make a move for his borrowed eye.

It was one thing to admit these thoughts to himself, it was another thing to solidify it with another person to make it permanent.

"...I don't think there's anyone out there for me anymore...." He closed his eyes and let the realization wash over him.

Yes, maybe that's why his dreams are so fractured, just blurring together past and future and everything in-between, stilted pictures that made no sense. The technique had successful distorted and skewed the precious images.

His life line. 

Dreams between soulmates were supposed to be vivid and comforting. Clear, familiar faces and interactions to lead them to one another; Not the jagged, sharp and often confusing glimpses that Yamato endured.

Yamato had long since accepted, during the quiet hours, alone, in ANBU that there may not be anyone for him in this world. 

Not anymore.

But that was alright, being with team 7 was enough, Kakashi was enough. Yamato held a far fetched hope, close to his heart, in his teenage years that the older teen who wielded lightning in his hand would hold his heart in the other. But this was enough. He didn't need a soulmate when he had these bonds.

Silence settled over them, so thick Yamato could hear the white noise of the forest clearly. Yamato was used to this; How like Kakashi to bring up something deeply personal and then shut down, when it got overhelming, as if it never happened. Ah, Yamato thinks maybe now he can get some rest. Now that the weight was off his chest. Now that he had finally spoken about it. His eyes fluttered shut then Kakashi speaks.

It's quite, but firm in his conviction.

"I didn't always dream. For years it was dark and I thought 'how like it that I would end up alone just the same'. Everyone else was gone or going and...I didn't have anything left."

Kakashi's breath hitched.

"It was dark one night and the next it wasn't. Suddenly I was supseneded in murky water and confined in thick glass, I couldn't make out the shapes beyond the pane, they were too distorted. Then came the blinding lights and...too small grave sites. And last night I..."

Kakashi cleared his throat, steeling himself against the eventual revelation. This could change everything. This would change everything.

Yamato's eyes snapped open as he gaped at Kakashi, his blanket dropped to his waist and his hands gripped it tight. His mouth was suddenly dry, he lurched forward the blanket, now discarded, on his thighs as he went to speak but Kakashi put a hand up.

"Last night...I dreamed of a great tree and a strange clan that I had promised I never saw."

He turned to Yamato, facing him with his visible eye closed. He reached up slowly and untied his headband, it dropped to the ground with a soft clink, he opened both eyes and let the sharingan spin.

Red. Red like his dreams. Is that how Kakashi sees a film of red?

Yamato made a strangled sound in the back of his throat.

"I dreamed...about a festival and a girl who took my hand...and she said my name."

Yamato tried to swallow the rapidly forming lump in his throat.

"Like welcoming me home."

Kakashi grinned wide under his mask and held out his arms.

"She said "Tenzo"."

Yamato didn't register his movement until his face was pressed up against the familiar worn flak jacket and his arms around a solid waist. His weight pitched them backward, off the log, and sent them sprawling onto the grass below.

Yamato scrambled up, straddling Kakashi's midsection, embarrassed of himself.

"I-i'm sorry I don't know what came over me, I-"

The laugh that bubbled up from the man beneath him filled him with warmth and he felt his cheeks heat up.

"I'm just glad... you're as happy...as I am. I wouldn't want anyone else. I didn't want anyone else."

"...K-kakashi..."

Kakashi pulled Yamato back down on top of him and threw the blanket over them, sheilding them from the cold.

"Let's...stay like this, for little awhile." Kakashi pressed his chin into Yamato hair and closed his eyes.

"We can...stay like this for the rest of our lives. If you...if you want that. I mean, I want that." Tenzo sputtered out.

Kakashi snorted and pulled him closer.

"Yeah, I think I could go for that."

Yamato smiled into Kakashi's throat. There would be time to take it slow now, time to rest. Yamato curled into the warmth of Kakashi's body and Kakashi tangled their legs. He didn't plan on ever letting go.  
They laid like that until dawn crept over the trees and bathed them in a new light.  
\----  
"Kakashi sensei?" Naruto called from his sleeping bag, rolling it up.

"Where did captain Yamato go?" Sakura looked around inquisitively.

"Maybe Naruto tried to attack them in his sleep again." Sai dodged an ill placed punch from an indigent Naruto.

"It was one time!" He whined.

It wasn't one time. It was several. Sai, however, keeps that remark to himself.  
\---

"Should we get up?" Yamato whispered  
from under the blanket.

The broad of the large log concealing them well.

"Mhm, let them wait they're used to that, we have a good reason for showing up late anyways. Kakashi slipped a finger under his mask and kissed Yamato. Yamato grinned and kissed him back. A very good reason indeed.


End file.
